Love
by Magna Dea
Summary: My entry for the Five Times Challenge, the reasons why Foaly tries to keep his thorny personality. Also a tribute to the late Commander Root. Don't worry, there are no ships in here apart from FC - C: Caballine, not Chix
1. Prologue

**A.N **Hi, this is just a prologue because I think a bit of back-story might help for this fan fic, so here it is:

I am new so bear with me

This story was written for the Five Time Challenge over on fangathering (and Artemis Fowl fan site)

The purpose of this story is to give Foaly some back story and to show the reason why he is so paranoid, sarcastic, etc.

So please read on, enjoy and review so I know if I'm doing something right!


	2. Mother

**Mother**

One of Foaly's earliest memories, and perhaps the saddest and most traumatic, is that of his family's holiday to Haven. He had been barely forty when his parents decided to show him the reason why the centaurs live in their secret colonies, and the rest of the fairies, elves, gnomes and pixies, live in theirs. Filhis, his baby sister, was too young to understand what happened to their mother, but Foaly could not forget it.

"That's where Spud's Spud Emporium is going to be built," his father smiled as he pointed a hairy hand to a bare patch of subterranean earth, holding his wife's hand in the other. "May, the elf that I told your mother about, is going to be the co-owner."

Foaly nodded his little head as he trotted along beside his parents, his sister sticking close to his flank. He hadn't wanted to go to Haven but his parents had forced him. It was rather boring in his opinion.

"What's that?" Filhis asked, poking her brother in the withers. "It's pretty."

"It's the Fountain of Frond, a hot spring runs under the city and it bubbles up there because a dwarf thought it was an oil reserve and tried to-"

"Boring!"

Foaly rolled his eyes and pivoted away from his sister. "It isn't boring Filly, it's science."

"That's my boy," his father interrupted before a fight could break out, "you'll be all grown up and hitched before we know it."

"Ew, no Da."

His mother ruffled his messy fringe and glanced around. "We're going to meet one of your father's friends in half an hour but we can go anywhere you like until then."

"Lili sticks!" Filhis chanted, her sweet tooth getting the better of her. She grabbed Foaly by the tail and stamped her tiny hooves as she tried to drag him towards a candy store.

Foaly remained firmly planted but his eyes were starting to water from Fhilis' relentless tugging. "I think we should visit Police Plaza. There are some prototype keyboards that the technicians are working on and I'm-"

"Foalionius," his mother admonished, "we did not come here to look at-"

There was a sudden scream and his sister whinnied in terror. Foaly, who had been sulking and staring at the floor, looked up to see his father and mother surrounded by a group of dwarves. One of them, a stocky creature with a ginger beard and a sharp looking dagger, growled out a few gnommish curse words.

"I told you to cut their throats before they could make a noise, now hurry up before the suits get here!"

Foaly froze in terror, his sister had pushed herself between his forelegs and was squeezing his cannon bones so hard that it hurt. What had he done to deserve this? More importantly, what had his parents done to deserve this?

"Boss," another of the dwarves growled, "there's kids over there, kill them too?"

"Yes," the ginger dwarf said, flipping his dagger into the air, "quickly."

Filhis screamed and ran, galloping into a dwarf that had been approaching them from behind in her confusion. He couldn't think, he shouldn't have to deal with this, it was just impossible.

"Foaly!" His father yelled as he reared to protect his mother. "Grab your sister and get out of here, go to Police Plaza!"

That was it, forget about his own life, forget about his parents, he had to save his sister. Foaly lowered his head, forced his eyes open, and charged straight at the dwarf who was terrorising his sister. He grabbed her around the girth, she was so tiny that he didn't need to struggle to lift her, and kept running. That had been the last time he saw his mother alive.


	3. Father

**Father**

Foaly's father never recovered from the loss of his wife. The court had never been able to prosecute as the murderers had never been found. The warlock who had treated his father admitted that Haven was a dangerous place for centaurs. Some traditions had died out over the decades but some fairies still refused to eat sim-meat, apparently a horse steak tasted the same as centaur.

Foaly had been halfway into his third year at the academy when the LEP officer came to pull him out of his computer class. It came as no surprise that his father had jumped down the Tara magma vein, Foaly had suspected that he would end it soon. The officer had been friendly, comforting even, but as soon as he mentioned adoption Foaly grabbed his bag and ran for the emergency exit. He had heard stories from other children and he refused to be separated from his sister after losing every other person that he cared about.

His sister had been upset when he told her that they were on the run, she was old enough to understand it now. Their father's death had taken an even larger toll on the young centaur and she had collapsed on the ground outside a supermarket and refused to get up.

"Foaly! Filhis!" An elf shouted from the other side of the street. "I'm a friend of your father, just stay where you are."

The elf ran across to them accompanied by a chorus of irate drivers. The first thing that Foaly noticed was the rosy tint to the elf's cheeks, the second was the green jumpsuit that he wore.

"Get away from me," he yelled, "you'll only hurt us more!"

Foaly pulled his sister into his arms, the first time he had done so since his mother's passing, and ran. He didn't care where he was going and he didn't care what he would do when he got there, he just had to get away.


	4. Sister

**Sister**

The decades between the death of Foaly's parents and his employment by the LEP were spent in hiding. He and his sister lived in the basement of the largest shopping centre in Haven. To tell the truth, it wasn't really a basement, it was more like a labyrinth of connecting tunnels and storage rooms that had been dug so deep into the foundations of the city that a hot spring had welled up in one of the rooms on the lowest level.

Even though he didn't have to worry about the costs of renting a house or water and electricity bills he still had to make a living. This he did through his talent for hacking: home computers, businesses, the LEP, no one was safe. But neither was he, or his sister.

He had been in the middle of hacking through the LEP's latest firewalls when the bead screen that his sister had made in her spare time burst from the doorway to the main corridor and Filhis trotted in looking the happiest he had seen her in a while.

"You've been picking pockets again," he accused, "you always smile like that when you come back from stealing some poor elf's wallet."

"You hack, why can't I pick pockets?"

He rolled his eyes and spun his modified computer chair around to face his little sister. "There is a difference, I only take what I need and I only take a bit from each computer or network that I hack. You take everything from one fairy, including their library cards and citizen ID's."

"Take from the rich and give to the poor, stop making excuses dearest brother of mine."

"Fine. What did you get?"

There was a clatter and a pile of mobile phones, wallets and trinkets fell onto the rock floor in front of Foaly's hooves.

"What in Tara is this?" Foaly growled, fishing a metallic hand gun from the pile of loot.

"There was an undercover officer in the supermarket, he should have been more careful with his side arm."

"It isn't funny Filly, how many times have I told you that we have to be careful? Now the LEP are going to be looking for this-" he smacked his hand against his stolen keyboard for emphasis and continued "-we need to be even more vigilant now."

Filhis kicked the wall in frustration. "How come it's okay for you to hack and steal and plunder all you like and as soon as I take one measly little gun you go completely off your rocker?"

Foaly took a deep breath and rubbed his withers as he thought. He had overreacted but everything that he had done up until then had been for his sister, she was the reason he woke up every morning.

"Our parents are gone; you are the _only_ person that I have left. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if anything happened to you."

Filhis smiled at him and patted his side. "Now we can protect ourselves from people like the dwarves who got mum, that's why I took the gun."

He sighed and checked the gun over, talking as he went. "Nice design, nuclear battery, titanium casing, multiple functions, new Farshoot sights. It's the latest Plasma 350 if I'm not mistaken."

"Well, that isn't the only thing that I got. There's cash, credit cards and some phones that we can fob off at a ridiculous price."

"Take out half the money from each wallet, no more than two or three credit cards and hand the wallets in to lost and found. Well keep the phones because the chips might come in handy."

"Why are you such a law-abiding citizen?" Filhis groaned as she started on the wallets. "We're the ones roughing it down here, you can't protect the rich fairies as well."

"I like to be kind."

His sister snorted and flicked her black tail at her brother; she had inherited her mother's black dun coat whereas he had his father's deep chestnut.

Foaly turned back to his computer just in time to see a warning from his firewall flash in the corner of his desktop.

"Pack some stuff, Filly," he warned as his fingers began to fly across the keyboard, tracking the origin of the hacker, "my firewall's been sliced through like cream cheese."

There was a scuffle from the corner of the room and Foaly assumed that his sister had tripped over one of the mattresses. He continued to run through the files on his computer at light speed until he found the hacker's IP address. It wasn't good.

"We're out of here, Filly!" He said, jumping from his chair, grabbing the gun from his keyboard and punching the off button on the hard drive. "The LEP are about to bust this joint wide open."

He spun on his hooves towards the door and froze. A gnome had a gun to his sister's head, another was in the process of ripping the bead curtain from the doorway.

"It's about time that you learnt that hacking an international organisation has consequences, mister centaur. It's a pity that the only way you learn is through death."

"No!" Foaly shouted, training his stolen hand gun on the gnome. His hands were shaking so badly that he would probably hit his sister if he shot.

"All's fair in war," the gnome smiled, pulling his trigger until it clicked, "say goodbye."

Foaly threw himself forwards at the same time that the gnome's gun loosed a shot. He was powerless, he knew that at the time, but he refused to believe that he had just lost his sister. He grabbed his sister as she fell and held her in his arms, crying so much that his tears were falling on her face. He expected to hear another click just above his ear, a sharp pain and then nothing, but he didn't. Instead there was a loud shout and the noise of a small army invading a toilet cubicle.

"Police! Get down on the ground!" An angry voice yelled. "Hands above your head, do _not_ move!"

Somebody sat down beside Foaly, draping a blanket over his shoulders. "Hello Foaly, I think we've met before, I was a friend of your fathers."

He looked up to see a rosy cheeked elf in a green jumpsuit knelt beside him.

"You remember me, don't you? I tried to stop you from running away outside the shopping centre on Market Street."

"It isn't Market Street anymore," Foaly whispered as he pressed his forehead to his sister's. "They renamed it after that gas explosion happened last year."

"You're a smart one, aren't you? Must take after your mother." The elf remembered how Foaly's mother had died and flinched. "Sorry, let me start again. I'm Major Julius Root; you can just call me Julius if you like."

"I suppose you found this place after you hacked through my firewall?"

"We wouldn't have had to hack through your firewall if you hadn't broken through ours so many times, can't have you stealing our technicians budget now can we?"

Foaly chuckled and lifted his head, wiping his eyes on the blanket around his shoulders. "I guess it was kind of stupid to do that, but I had to, we wouldn't have been able to-"

"Survive, I know," Root looked down at his boots and then back up again. "I suppose you don't have anywhere else to go now."

"No."

"Well, you seem to have a talent with technology so….how would you like to join the LEP, be our junior technical advisor for a while."

Foaly considered it for a moment, staring at his sister who he still held in his arms. Where else would he have to go? He had no one left now.

"Okay, I guess. Thank you."

"It's okay," Root smiled, as Foaly would soon find out, it was a rare thing for him to do. "Now come on, let's get you cleaned up with some proper food in your stomach."


	5. Root

**Root**

Over the years Foaly had learnt that it was easier for him to hide his true feelings than to show them. That's why he let people think that he could only be a sarcastic, paranoid, insufferable jerk. But some people had seen through that disguise over the years. Commander Root for one, he had been like a father to Foaly since his sister's death but, like all children, Foaly had grown out of the need for Root to baby him every day. Captain Holly Short had seen through his first impressions as well and now they were best friends. The two people on the whole planet that Foaly cared enough about to live for.

But one day his disguise didn't work, the day that Commander Julius Root died. He lost his second father that day and he had almost lost his best friend as well. If they had both died he was sure that he would have joined his father at the bottom of the Tara chute.

It was the misfortunate Major Kelp who walked in on Foaly after Sool left the ops booth. He had managed to hold himself together in the presence of the IA gnome but as soon as he left the combination of grief, relief that Holly was still alive, and memories that he had tried to suppress turned Foaly into the vulnerable fairy that he was under his thick coating of sarcasm.

He didn't know the Major very well, nor were they very friendly with each other (Foaly suspected his usually thorny personality and odd quirks had scared the sensible elf off) but Trouble was one of Holly's best friends and that meant that he would be used to strange things happening. That's why Foaly threw himself at Trouble's shoulder the moment he entered the ops booth and proceeded to cry until he had himself back under control and the elf knew most of his life story.


	6. Holly

**Holly**

It seemed that his mother's death had started a disturbing trend in Foaly's life that began bad and continued to grow steadily worse. Luckily he had found a few more people to care about since Commander Root's passing but there weren't enough for his liking. The list now lay at three long, Captain Holly Short, Major Trouble Kelp and Caballine, the female centaur from the art gallery. Two of the fairies on the list made a living out of risking their lives daily and the only other, Caballine, could turn her tail on him at any moment, she was still relatively young compared to him and he had still hadn't figured out why she had picked him over all the other eligible stallions in Haven and the underground colonies.

His list was cut down from three to two on the day that Holly disappeared to Hybras and, even though he knew there was only a small chance that she had been killed in the time tunnel, Foaly was distraught. Trouble, who still hadn't accepted the fact that Foaly included him as someone to care about, had enough to worry about without adding Foaly's feelings to his burden, and Caballine had left Haven for the week to visit relatives in the old centaur colonies.

For three years Foaly managed to cope without his best friend, with a little help from Trouble and Caballine of course. And he knew that Holly would come back sometime, just maybe not that week……or that month.

For once in Foaly's life, he felt like he belonged with Caballine, Trouble and the LEP. And he knew that if his parents, his sister or Julius were watching him at that moment they would all be happy.

**E.N** So, that's the end of this story, please review and tell me what you think/whether I should write more stories here (because I was rather nervous to put this up and I'm still not sure about it) Thanks!

**_And I would also like to say that I have enabled anonymous reviews, so everyone who doesn't have an account here can review :)_**


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